“Miss Hope,” he said. “Is something wrong?”
“Did you hear someone?” I asked him.
Valentin shook his head slowly.
Why would I speak to him? my mother asked. And what did I just tell you about showing weakness?
I turned back to my work and tried to calm myself. Whatever this was, whatever it meant, I did not have attention to spare for it now.
There was a knock at the door. I turned and stared at it in alarm until Valentin rose to respond. He had heard that, then.
A German stood outside, the tall, dark-haired one. The torturer.
“What is it, Martin?” Valentin asked.
“The Fräulein wants to see her,” said Martin in German.
Valentin nodded. “I’ll take her at once.”
“No.” A slight smile crossed Martin’s face. “I am to take her.”
Valentin stared impassively at Martin.
“Miss Hope,” he called, without looking at me.
I approached slowly. I would not have liked the idea of going to see Rahel, in any case, but I liked it less for the malicious smile on Martin’s face and the wary look on Valentin’s. I stopped at the doorway.
“Why does she want to see me?” I asked. “Didn’t she say what she wished last night?”
“It seems not,” said Martin.
I glanced up at Valentin. His expression was stony, but he gave me a slight nod.
“Keep the heat even,” I said to him. And then to Martin, “I will have to be back before the hour is out to complete the next step.”
“I doubt the Fräulein will have use for more than an hour of your company,” said Martin, his wolfish smile curling into a definite leer.
I stepped through the doorway. Martin started to follow, but Valentin seized his upper arm and leaned close.
“If any harm comes to her,” he said in a low voice. “You will answer to me.”
Martin pulled back, but Valentin did not let go.
“I answer to Fräulein Rahel,” Martin said.
“I will be clear,” said Valentin. “In this, you will answer to me.”
They exchanged a long, unfriendly look before Martin turned away, and Valentin released his arm.
Valentin watched from the doorway as we walked down the hallway, and it wasn’t until we had passed the wide, open stairway and crossed out from his sight that Martin took my arm. I tried to shake him off, but his grip tightened.
“Our captain likes you,” he hissed in German.
“I doubt it,” I replied. “More likely he simply dislikes you.”
Martin stopped abruptly, released my arm, and slapped me across the face.
I staggered back, my mind shocked to a blinding white. I put a hand to my face. It felt hot, and then began to sting.
“There,” said Martin. “Not so clever now, are you? Valentin never did know how to handle a mouthy woman.”
I turned back to him, slowly, desperately wishing for a mouthy retort. But all I could do was stare, eyes wide. My cheek was tingling now, and the pain was growing. I had a sudden and alarming urge to cry.
“Valentin will punish you for this,” I said. My voice sounded very far away, but at least it did not tremble.
Martin laughed. “You think Valentin will care about a little smack?”
“He said you’re not to harm me.”
“He did.” Martin stepped close to me. I tried to back away, but he seized my arm again and pulled me toward him. His smile had something worse behind it than mere mockery. “But you are more innocent than you look if you think that was the harm he meant.”
I stared at him in horror. His words were like another slap to the face, shocking me back into silence. I couldn’t miss his meaning. I swallowed hard, and lowered my hand from my face with effort.
Martin smiled again but made no further threat, apparently satisfied that he had put me in my place. He pulled me after him, down a corridor emitting faint piano music. He knocked at an ornately paneled door. The music stopped, and Rahel’s voice invited us in.
The door opened on a spacious and lavishly decorated parlor. Floor-to-ceiling high windows draped in heavy burgundy curtains let in all the sooty light London had to give. A thick Persian rug spread across the marble-tiled floor, and an emerald-green velvet sofa stood diagonally across it. Rahel lay on the sofa, a book in her hands, facing the piano, where Berit had just stopped playing. She watched as Martin conveyed me into the room and pushed me into a plush chair across from her. If she objected to his handling of me, or noticed the redness on my cheek, she did not say so. She merely sat upright, swinging her silk-clad legs over the side of the sofa and laying her book open on its spine in her lap.
“Ah, Theo-see-bee-ya,” she said, pronouncing it carefully and wrong. “I have been reading. Berit, you may go.”
The older woman rose silently from the piano bench and slipped out of the room through an inner door. Martin turned toward the door we’d entered through, but Rahel stopped him.
“No, Martin,” she said. “You will stay.”
I didn’t look at him. I didn’t have to, to picture the look on his face.
“So, as I said, I have been reading,” Rahel said. “And I came across a passage that reminded me of you.”
She lifted the book so I could just make out the cover. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
“Women are everywhere in this deplorable state,” she read in English. “Men have various employments and pursuits which engage their attention; but women, confined to one—that is, the art of pleasing men—seldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour. But was their understanding once emancipated from the slavery to which the sensuality of man and their short-sighted desire has subjected them, we should probably read of their weakness with surprise…”
Rahel trailed off, gazing meditatively at me.
“It made me think of you, Theo-see-bee-ya,” she said, reverting to German. “I thought
